


To Lands Undiscovered

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8850457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: A dull day. A bright future.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Owl_songs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owl_songs/gifts).



> It is autumn/winter 1563 at this point.

 

Milady de Sevigny was a trifle bored. The day was dark, the castle was quiet, her duties were done, and her most reliable source of entertainment was altogether too absorbed in a new shipment of books from south of the Border to attend her. He had been silent for over an hour. It was familiar, and welcome, and yet, today, it did not suit her mood. 

She prowled, seeking distraction. The library abounded with it, on an ordinary day: their world between covers, captured and tamed for the pleasure of Milady and her lord. Today, Philippa spurned it all, in favour of the box that had come from Mortlake. She paused. She did not intrude between Francis and Dr Dee – one of the many small, silent rules of mutual courtesy which made her marriage what it was, and all it could be. But Francis would not care, most like. If there were items of danger and secrecy in this box when it arrived, he would have removed them, certainly. It had been open for two days. So a bored wife might, with fair comportment, investigate. 

A volume of mathematics. Another. A volume of theology, or demonology, a cult into which she had never been initiated. The old Queen would have detested this part of Dr Dee. Philippa knew little of the young Queen's beliefs, probably by firm design of that clear-minded lady, but Elizabeth tolerated the magister and his investigations, for a certainty. She did not, however, wish to plumb the depths of Acheron today. It was sufficiently dark in the November noontime already.

She looked further, passing over a letter addressed to Lymond, as Lymond, as though he had no other title nor rank. Interesting, but not for her. 

Bagged and rolled carefully at the innermost corner of the box, however, was something new. She unveiled, unrolled, and revealed the thing. 

It was a map. Crackling under her hand, as she looked for names familiar. She did not find them. It was a new land. 

Francis was sitting closer to the fire, with an intent look she associated with the poems that he absorbed into his sponging brain. He had no reason to look up, and yet he did at that moment. 

“What do you have?” It was warmly said, undefended. Not Francis the former marshal, jealous of his stature and his command. 

“I’m not certain,” she answered. “A map.”

“Well, of course. Dee loves his maps.” Francis smiled, and stretched in his deep seat, visibly shaking off hours of stillness. “I haven’t opened it. Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. It was most uncharacteristic of Milady de Sevigny not to know something. She felt almost transgressive. “It is a coastline I don’t recognised. Detailed.”

He moved across the room to hover at her elbow. “A chart, not a map,” he observed, tutorial. She nudged him lightly in the abdomen, lest he think she was in the mood for a lesson. She wanted distraction, not pedagogy. 

“Do you know it?”

“Oh yes,” he said, and there was a note in it she didn’t recognise. “It is the north.”

“Where you once were?” she said. It was more delicate than was their routine, but she knew a little of his loss, of what Muscovy did to him. Of Chancellor, and what might have been.

He smiled. “No. Further. The land of the white bear, and the earth that thunders. Iceland.” There was a pause. “I have never been there.”

For Francis Crawford, a rare admission. A rare truth, indeed. Sometimes Philippa - Lazaretto, Seraglio and service to Queens plural notwithstanding - felt overawed by him in this. If he had not travelled there, he had a correspondent, or a link such as Dr Dee who could reach out and create pathways for contact. But not this place, apparently. She studied the chart, detailed in outline, bare of settlements in great part. 

“What is there?”

“Nothing,” he said, casual contempt and indifference in the tone, and neither in the face. “It is a poor place. Poorer now, for the Danes are taking closer hold. There will not be another Jon Aranson on an episcopal throne.” 

“But?” A prompt. Sometimes he needed more, but not today. 

“But I dream,” he returned, a gift of openness. “Of a wasteland full of danger. Of running from the world. But it is a place of wonders. I know it, although I can’t know it.” Philippa was used to this, now. Sometimes, he saw impossible things, and knew more than one man should. She had learned not to let it trouble her. 

She looked around the library. It was familiar. Comfortable. Safe, in a world without many safe places. Beloved, too, and close to their wider beloveds. “Shall we go there?” she said. 

She waited, watchful, as his eyelids swept down, up, down again, and eventually cleared his intense gaze to meet hers. She could read in that a world of responsibilities considered: their infant offspring – but there was Richard, nobly to bear an uncle’s burden, as today. The Queen, and all that might befall her if Margaret Lennox had her way – but there was time, still, while the Leicester match was still a live grenade in Her Highness’s affairs. The Lymond estate – but Francis had left that before, and often. 

The mobile lips curved, smiled, and formed the word he did not need to speak to his observant wife. “If you will it, certainly. We shall do that, my lady sweet. I shall give you new worlds. Will you be a stockfish merchant, my love? The market is captive, the Lenten weeks so long. Or shall we capture a bear for the court? He could hardly be worse comported than de Chastelard.”

Philippa’s dull day brightened, in a trice. Much dreaming of salt cod later, they were resolved on a voyage, when the days were endless and bright, and the fishing would be plentiful. More, Dee believed there could be mapping of the northern bays, at the height of summer, when the ice receded. Fisherman had spoken to fisherman, and at the end of the fishy chain had been Dee, listening and noting. And transmitting it to Francis, who made all things possible. It was past time she learned to make maps, after all. Or charts. A pleasing prospect, away from duty. With Francis.

(By contrast, their projected burst into the stockfish trade was a joke. She thought it was a joke. She resolved to bring plenty of dried herbs and lavender water for below decks on the return journey, in case it was not a joke.)

They might never make the voyage, it was true. Duty was almost ever-present. But the planning was sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> 1563 is when de Chastelard made a scandal of himself at court. Early 1565 is when Mary Queen of Scots met and fell for Lord Darnley, Margaret Lennox's son. If only Francis Crawford had been paying attention, but perhaps he was making his map, by then?


End file.
